All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well, maybe that should be Neil and Cameron of Advantage Consulting Services, since they are not strangers to after conference festivities nor are they strangers to some of the most successful social media optimization campaigns being run in the SEO industry. Cameron covers the fun part and Neil talks about the SMO or social media optimization panel he spoke on regarding Wikipedia.

Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts traveled to Chicago all the way from New Zealand and shares information about the blog SEO session here at Search Engine Strategies Chicago where he’s presenting on RSS feed optimization. He also talks about his daughter’s success with optimizing her Neopets blog and he offers tips for search engine conference attendees.

Sitting in on the link baiting session the presenters made it sound so easy. Rand talked about how, on average, a front page Digg post or exposure on Techcrunch can get you 2000 new inbound links. That’s an astronomical amount of links and the good thing is, everyone can can do it. Here are some things to consider.

If trying to build link bait, brainstorm, research and find a good, unique idea.

Design matters. Use that Web 2.0 look.

Self submission is ok, but only submit what others will think is good. Not everything.

Get connected with others in your industry and possible top posters at Digg.

The social sites do watch IPs so don’t try to spam them or trick them.

My morning track has been all about analytics this morning. The first was Web Analytics & Measuring. With two presenters, they both had a good amount of time to cover their topics. The second was Vendor Chat on Measuring Success where there were six presenters talking about analytics in very short 10 minute presentations. Some takeaways included:

Track organic, paid and referral traffic separately to see who is increasing or decreasing.

Keep an eye on exit rates and how they compare to entrance keywords.

Track new vs return traffic rates.

Setup goals to track what you want to measure.

Latency is a big thing as someone may look today, but not buy for a few weeks or months if the purchase is large.

Bulk submitting your site to search engines is quite an easy task. Granted, it may sound spammy, but it’s not. 🙂 This session covered things like XML site maps and paid inclusion options. Google gave an overview of their webmaster tools and gave tips like having separate XML site maps for different types of media (like mobile) and removing un-necessary information from the urls (like session ids). Yahoo talked about Yahoo Site Explorer and said that more features were on the way. They noted that a feedback area launched recently and it was a great way to put in your opinion on what was missing orbroken. It also comes with Digg like functionally so users can vote on topics. The more votes, the quicker Yahoo will consider working on it. Overall, XML site maps is the way to go to make sure you get all your URLs indexed by the major search engines.

The podcast and audio search session was very good. It started with Amanda Watlington giving an overview of of podcasting. Other speakers included Darion Babin of Webmaster Radio and Rick Klau of Feedburner. They all made excellent points on podcasting. Takeaway points included:

Bandwidth can be costly, but it’s worth it.

Don’t just get into iTunes, submit podcasts everywhere.

Make it as easy as possible for users to subscribe.

Quality does matter so get good software, a good microphone and a pop screen.

Prepare for growth.

Always transcribe your shows and make that accessible to search engines.

Thomas (TwisterMC) and I arrived fine in Chicago without delay. Unlike many other travelers, including Shoemoney who I talked to about a 4+ hour delay.

After getting settled in I went downstairs to Kitty O’ Sheas on the ground floor of the Hilton to see which search marketers were about and it was a who’s who of SEO in there. Rand Fishkin’s bright and smiley face stood out as the first person I recognized in the somewhat dimly lit pub along with many others including: Loren Baker, Neil Patel, Cameron Olthius, Kim Kraus Berg, Dave Temple, Frank Watson, Chris Boggs, Bruce Clay, I finally met David Wallace, Todd Malicoat, Dave Naylor, Jeremy Shoemaker, Justilien, Jonathan Hochman, Liana Evans (who is running a “hat bait” promo and Rebecca from SEOMoz. There are many others but I forget names and we had to get out to dinner.